The Man of A Thousand Faces
by asongtosaygoodbye
Summary: When the human Doctor dreams, he is himself. Not this waste of a man half past magician, desperate to build an impossible machine. Not an addict. Not a shut in. When the human Doctor dreams, he dreams of dying, and she might be the last thing who can wake him up.
1. Just A Poetic Tragedy

**i. just a poetic tragedy.**

"_Not a sign. No one here's seen him in a month…hasn't been a call in three weeks. I thought you of all people would know-I'm starting to worry." The captain told the flower, voice just below bitter, transposing revelation over airwaves and telephone wire, tangled._

"_That's what I was afraid of. Thank you and…I'm sorry." Plastic cutting a sound sharp in the empty air, connection buried in the landline._

A cocktail of directions blended word of mouth and six miles of sludge on sneakers later, she bloomed across a damp and dusty doorstep, checking the faded numbers cast in amber light along the frame, fidgeting with the zipper splitting the front of her blue jumper. Eating nerves on the exhale, she closed her eyes and knocked three times.

"Hullo?" Green paint scratched along half rotted wood folded back to reveal a withered woman held half a head shorter, mossy eyes polished and peeking from behind half-moon spectacles. "I ain't never seen th'likes of you around these parts—not much of _anyone_ new, to be fair…" she sighed with the semblance of a smile. "Anyway, whatchu here for dearie?"

The girl swallowed, honeysuckle hair tucked behind her ear. "Uhm, I was looking for a…for a friend of mine whats supposed to be livin' up in your top room. Tall, skinny bloke, a bit...odd? You know anything about him?"

The landlady's smile faded to flatline as she stepped aside, gesturing to the dark wooden stairs tacked to the left wall. "I'd say you got the right place. Go on up—he don't ever answer the door, but it ain't ever locked either… It's like he's waitin on something." _Someone._

Someone.

One nod, then rubber on wood, creaking and a shipwreck heart.

_Knock,_

_ Knock, _

_ Knock,_

_** Knock.**_

"About time…." Familiar voice shot storm clouds through her lungs, the absence heard heavy in the empty intonation tugging tight her hurricane heart. "It's open…I knew you'd be coming."

One more motion of a prayer upon her lips, a deep breath, and she tore the handle open.

The flat was hardly a home at all, more a medium small box of hardwood, empty save every inch of surface covered in the ruins of a thousand theories gone sour. There was no bed, just two chairs and a desk crammed into the corner, each littered with all manner of eviscerated electronics and overflowing across the floor—what looked to have been a microwave, half a blender, television, toaster, a fork, spoon, telephone, three computers, and several gutted motors, engines all mismatched into so many new and fantastical contraptions cast across the carpet, propped against shelves. The first thing she noticed.

The second was the _walls_. Each and any possible inch of space was packed with a hundred different formulas, equations with impossible answers trapped and smeared and stained against the woodwork, carved into the baseboards, drawn in charcoal along the ceiling fan, clouding the blades, unravelling along the floor—

_The floor_. She hadn't seen him at first, pushed left of center, discarded just lying there down to his shirtsleeves, blue buttoned shirt fastened all wrong, tie hanging over the back of a chair, jacket forgotten beside it. A collection of stains punctuating the wrinkles in the fabric just above the worst of the tatters, edges all torn and frayed even further than the artefact of the man inside of them—a lifeless shape just lying there listless, eyes glazed over and tracing absently the physics etched into the ceiling, open and wide and doing anything but_ seeing_.

A collecting of bottles gleamed empty on the outskirts of the studio, some strewn across the desk atop a million sheets of torn off paper, some strangled down to broken necks and shards caught in the carpet, violence catalogued in every glass discarded and crude cavern punched into the drywall. A bent spoon silver under an empty pack of matches.

"…Doctor?" The name slipped through her lips in reverent horrification, disbelieving. Refusing to accept this man, this marvelous man who walked into danger like a child unafraid, the beginning and end of something beautiful and ancient and timeless, the man who held the universe like day's first and purest drops of dew on his fingertips reduced to something plastered in cold sweat, sightless to the hardwood of a forgotten flat with a mind blown so open into emptiness.

_You did this._

She faltered there, every scenario she had formed and imagined in her head, every script self written swept away, knuckles pressed against her lips, nauseous with the weight of it all unfolding lead against her ribcage, pressing out and threatening to snap her every bone brittle.

_You._

"Oh, so it's _you_..? How _brilliant…._" His head lolled to the side, eyes catching her shape, seeing past her,_ through her_, events unfolding already seen and half lived splayed in her wake set to the sound of rapping on wood.

She looked like so much sunlight, shifting through the cracks- shades more solid than the usual delusion, so solid she could be true and standing there, his favorite girl all pink and blue, enough gravity to wipe the words from the rafters, tear down every hour of progress because none of it really mattered when she was standing there.

But then again, he was dying.

With every lonely heartbeat, dying.

"Rose?"

The levy cracked and she was there, going to her knees nervous next to him, eyes shaking hazel in the glow of a lamp turned over—probably quite a fire hazard, really—hands moving to reach then retracted, unsure. "Yeh, it's me. God…what's happened to you?" she begged across the cloying air, the scent of burnt fuses and spilled bourbon heavy with something half alive and human.

He grumbled something on an exhale, palm pressed into his eye socket before shoving it back through a mess of off-brown hair before he moved languidly to an elbow, sallow face all shadow, groping for the flask dropped a few inches away. "I thought you didn't want to see me." Dismissing her question with a slurred reminder.

"I didn't say that—hey, I think you've had right enough." She intoned, plucking the vessel from his palm, sniffing it. "Ugh, that's terrible—what is it, motor oil?"

He frowned, leaning heavily against the nearest desk leg, nothing more than fever struck eyes bright and grafted to her face. "Ah, well…somethin' to slow it all down a touch." Half a grin, tapping his temple, explanation dragging like a question, voice rusted with disuse and such solo screaming.

She nodded, face just open pages. "Right…" she swallowed, cataloguing the damage. "How, I mean, what for?" she inched closer, cold fingers trailing to his cheekbone, hand cupping his hollow face, bringing him back to focus. "Look at me, Doctor," his opiate eyes finally caught hers, attentive yet still so averted by the deafness behind them. Eyes of an angel and a lover and a friend and a fighter fallen to something mad and frenetic, all overflow and eons empty. Earthly vices pulling him down to a level subhuman, retrograde a slip in the searching of his new skin. She exhaled, steeling herself. "Alright, c'mon, get up-_you_'re comin' with me."

Authority threatening to tremble in her voice, she took his hands and tugged him gently, standing. The contact caused him to blink, snapping back into focus, face too close then far away, detracting, tearing his hands out of hers and fumbling for the table edge. "Mhhmmm, _maybe_." Head bobbing indecisive, studying a place above her. "But, I s'pose maybe you know how this goes better than I do now." He trailed off, hardly addressing anything in particular.

"I don't know what you're talking about." She drew herself up, forcing her voice firm. "You're not staying here though. This place is poison." She gestured to the mural of broken mathematics, fingertips ghosting the atmosphere of some nonsensical engineering, glimmering like a riddle, unabsolved in the half light, pausing at the desk just to his left, zeroing in on a scattered stack of scribbles.

Not scribbles, sketches.

Gingerly she lifted the stack, brow tightening a fraction, thumbing through. Schematics of the TARDIS, Donna crumbled mindless, a kindly old man, the skyscape of a barren planet dotted with human shapes in the shadow of an explosion, a woman with a gun, Ood huddled in council before the wake of a storm.

A man she didn't recognize broken and laughing and full of murder, notes clouding the page, a skewed score of four note sets strangling the page. A revolver and the eclipsing of a planet.

Her.

Five, ten, fifteen versions of her face, some obscured under calculations, lost and found and drawn over blueprints, embedded in the paper.

"Doctor…what's all this?" she asked, softening, head tilted.

He had been watching her from the corner, somewhere halfway to horror, wary as he unlocked and dialed forward, confiscating the pages with a tight jerk of his wrist, eyes all bright with such deep and terrible darkness. "Sometimes I dream, you know." Words like a corpse shoved under the rug, creeping out the edges, rancid. "And when I dream, it's of dying, and it _hurts."_ Gaunt face, body melting into the wall by the shadows conjoined, he watched her like some animal left to rot and waste.

The girl worried her bottom lip, stepping forward as a lamb to slaughter, hands knotted.

"_Every night_ is just an update from across that wall, every moment that I'm missing while I'm here awake, loud and clear." He stumbled closer, words caught between his teeth, fist clenched around the papers like the wrath of a fallen god, and then he was standing too close, but so far away from anything here but every single deviation of a detail. "'The Doctor' is dead. Somewhere out across space there's a new man with a new face sauntering up out of my corpse, and let me tell you he does not give a _damn_ about Rose Tyler."

So close she could kiss him, like that day those weeks ago on the beach, all impulse before so much confusion, discomfort, _betrayal_ settled back between her lungs, and she agreed when he sent himself away. All to give her the space she asked, time to understand things. To figure it out.

"I died, and now it's all on loop. Every night." He tore away from her, pacing, jaw locked. "Every…" he muttered low to himself, stopped, stumbled, tore the dreamscapes in his hands, letting them fall. "Everything that made me _unique_, every corner of my mind, every little part of that Doctor you knew is all locked up_ here_—" palm pressing to his sternum, voice dropping like a whisper in the rain. "Held up in this one track heart."

The suggestion of a tear threatened stinging at her eyes, suffocating, searching for the words she needed to help him. Any reassurance she could offer, any way to let him know that it was _okay _to be afraid, okay to hurt, okay if he wanted to hate her or hurt her or forgive her or to hold anything he felt, as long as he didn't _dare_ think he could just give up.

Her mouth opened, and then she was just _there_, arms wrapped around to press against his shoulder blades, fists in fabric, the top of her head tucked under his chin, just like it _should_ be, just like it always was except for him just standing there wooden.

Slowly he shifted, tentative and motion like an afterthought, bringing his arms up from where they hung at his sides to tug around her back, holding her close like a man drowning, inhaling the truth of her and the echo of her heart beating against his chest.

"So…how 'bout you come on with me, and we can come back here to get whatever you're working on tomorrow, or, whenever? I think it might be good for you…to get away from it for a while." _Stupid girl you know it's the hell inside his head._ "I mean, to be around other people, so it's not just you in there, okay?" detracting a fraction, head tilted to the side.

Broken eyes traced the floorboards, then lifted back to hers, the flick of a smile tugging his lips, for her, followed by something like nod, still something tense working in the shadow of his jawbone, profile sharp against the solitary light, downcast.

"Mm, well, good enough. We've got plenty of room at dad's place still—" she started, releasing him, going to the door. He just stood there, focusing on nothing and fading out for a moment, taking a step, dizzy, swaying as the room swam all loud around him, the floorboards creaking closer until—

"Doctor? Oh hell, _now_…" she rushed back to the man, bonescape body dropped like a stone behind her, out cold, heartbeat steady.

She cursed to herself, digging in her pocket for her mobile, calling a cab in advance. Hanging up, she shifted forward with a sigh, knees tugged to her chest, fingertips absent through his mussed hair. "It's alright, I'm gonna get you home, you great half human space dunce you…." She whispered across the emptiness, the softness of a kiss pressed to his forehead.

_Promise._

* * *

I couldn't help it, I had to join in on writing for this ship. Next chapter should be up within the next two weeks, so let me know what you guys think in the meantime :]

**Song: Poetic Tragedy - The Used**

-xo.


	2. Ashtray Heart

**ii. ashtray heart.**

_He's still breathing._

All hands, just palms stretched over into callous, flesh tugged along bone, buried in the backseat casket of the cab-a quadruped stain of saffron brushed across the slick wetness of the rain, streaked under the midnight mass of sky and shipwreck situation.

But it was all wrong, the first shuttered wing beats of a dirt doomed sparrow. Cold and fevered under her fingertips, every inch a man drowning.

_Drowning._

Too many slow track miles of midnight, winding down residential roads, tires eating gravel in such a nerve shattering shadow of speed. Headlights burnt and bled through the bricks, reflected amber in her stain glass eyes, brakes startling the asphalt, flinging her numb and hollow fast into action—shoving a wad of uncounted cash into the cabbie's outstretched hand at the edge of the driveway, then set to dragging.

The doorstep fractured warmth onto the sill, long beams and blackout shape, a woman under the overhang, silhouetted hand on her hip cocked left.

"It's about _time! _Worried sick I was, what with you out in all this rain, not answering my calls—"she broke the barrier of the wood carved frame, brows knit. "Enough to make it seem like you'd up and gone with—Rose…?"

"M-mum…" Water streamed frigid down her face, plastering blonde strands slick to her skin, dripping down her nose, caught between her lips. Bambi eyes and a dying man slumped against her shoulder. "I found him."

Silence faltered the older woman all agape, lavender dressing gown drenching as she was tugged off of the porch and down to her daughter, bare feet slipping in the mud as she rushed over. "_Pete!_" She leaned in close to inspect the man gaunt in the half light, the shadows throwing the riot girl so sure into so much worry, something like terror haunting into the way she knawed her lip, the way she _stared_. "Put on some tea!" Shifting to hoist the sparse weight of the anchorbone man, arm tugged over her shoulders. "I think we're going t'need it…."

* * *

"It's not good."

"No shit, sweetheart. What exactly is wrong with him?"

Receiver molded to her ear, she perched on the edge of the couch, one hand slipping into the empty embrace of his-empty save the subtle shaking. "…I don't know."Words all kerosene between her teeth, burning down her throat.

"Well, try to find out….I'll be down there in twenty."

"No- you don't have to do that-"

"Leaving now, Rose."

"No-Jack—_Jack! _I can-_"_

Line falling to static.

…_I can take care of him myself._

Jaw tightening, she set down the scuffed red mobile, bright against the rain stains dark across her jeans. This wasn't right, this wasn't_ her_, just sitting there and watching so empty of solution, kinetic pressure bright in her fingertips, spreading down to her knees, every edge alert and ready to do _something_.

Anything.

_1:16 AM_

She looked down, glared into the numbers haunting the screen, desperate energy boiling rancid into clenched fists and salt marks, angry. At Jack. At herself. At him. _At herself._

"Rose?" Whispered, Jackie stepped across the doorway, wooden tray set with cups and sugar, eyes all shades of ocean steeped in overstatement. "Tea's ready."

The girl scowled, griping her elbows. "Mm. Fat lot of good _that'_s gonna do..." She thumbed over bone stark knuckles, feeling the fever beating through his blood. "It's not like last time."

"Well, how'm _I _supposed to know that? I'm not exactly an _expert_ here-"

"Then why don't you go back to bed!" her voice cracked, pitching as she choked back a sob, pressure building behind her eyes, some concave mycology set to strangle.

The woman halted, held there, tongue between her teeth, lips sewn shut, _watching._ Her daughter there so dissolved, sitting on the edge of the center couch cushion with the scarecrow of that man she could never quite hate as a mother should.

"Rosie, I'm just tryin' t'help." She set the tray on the side table, porcelain tainted amber under the soft glow of the lamp. "You know I am." Voice dropping a shade softer, she placed a kiss gentle to her forehead, frowning. Jaw working, she padded back to the stairs, hand on the banister. "If ya need anything, just let me or your father know, alright?"

"Huh? Oh, yeh…of course." Smile forced, synthetic and failing as the footsteps faded.

And all was silent,

save that shaking sound like a scaffold set to storming.

_Stupid girl._ _Selfish girl._

Of course it'd been hard on him. She always knew, _always_ knew in the seconds trailing thoughts of the last time they met, so much dream come true crashing so fast to flatline. That day on the beach, silhouetted against the frigid setting of the Norway sun, a collection of halfway strangers.

He knew her too well and loved her too deeply to misread that halfway horror aching across her eyes. Said the words for her. She needed some time.

She was dizzy with the feel of such weighted possibility, so real and close and perfect that experience had taught her to fear. There was always a catch. Always. Numbly, she had nodded and let him go, mumbled that she'd call, somehow. That was easiest. That, she was used to.

Trying to let him go.

_Trying._

He shifted, just a tremor on the far edge of consciousness. Head lolling against the burgundy pillow, face all angles and soft sharpened shadows, so familiar under the evidence of such dark and extended solitude. He had always been that way—the waking façade of an easy smile had always seemed to fall into some secret sorrow on the few occasions in which she had caught him asleep. Slowly, she edged forward, tucking loose strands behind her ear, and leaned down to listen for his hollow heartbeat.

Erratic, fast fast slow, empty of accompaniment.

Shivering, she relocated, rocking back and set to watch, all eyes and overdraw, nerves tangled fishingwire.

_She knew it'd be hard on him._ But she could pretend. Maybe he needed space too. Maybe he was keeping busy. Maybe this was better. Maybe he wasn't real. Maybe she'd just wake up again alone. Maybe he didn't want her.

But she was a smart girl. She was a smart girl and she _knew him_. Better than she admitted, better than she sad, better than anyone else. She knew every thought and doubt and tremor was an excuse, each one painting her a coward.

"Has she gotten any better at tea?"

The girl jumped, hammerstrike heart at the rasping sound rusting through his lips. He coughed into his elbow then propped himself up, regarding her through halfmast eyes, brow raised.

Rose stared defenseless in disbelief, blinking twice before regaining her composure enough to offer an answer. "…Course not, same ol' tea." Spoken like surface tension, water breaching the brim.

"Right, right…then we don't want any of that…" voice dropping in hushed disdain, looking over at the tray, pausing vacant at a point on the floor, lost in thought before glancing back over, rictus grin spreading slowly across his sunken face, half familiar in the lamplight. A giggle broke through his teeth, trapped between his shoulders. "Ah, we used to always run about like this…" He lifted their hands intertwined, position held from her gentle desperation. "Remember that?"

"Heh...always." Fondness ghosted her lips at the musing of the memory, faded to careful concern as she watched his eyes so overbright and underfocused. One could call him cheerful, but _she knew him too well._ The Doctor was only so cheerful when he was so desperately starving to mask something so forbidden as fear.

But, then there was that _smell._

"Doctor….are you drunk?"

He smiled wider, let himself fall back against the pillow. "Of course." Inhale, out, tilting back to circumscribe the ceiling, watching it spin. "Always am, nowadays…"

She faltered, scraping for an answer, finding the image of so many broken bottles caught clogging in her throat, remembering the refuse rotting the perimeter of that hole he called a home. Her jaw worked and he caught her expression so straining in the half light-smiled, almost sadly. Almost too honest.

"I'm not angry, you know." Sounding something like sober. "Not really."

Syllables stretched across the silence, hanging threadless, somewhere near the ceiling. Crashing slowly, slipping heard into her heart, so stark and far, _far _too honest.

"_Why?"_

He shifted at the whisper ringing bitter, watching too closely the way her nails dug in to her palms. He exhaled heavy into his hands, shoving fingers back through his hair, all lead bones and sunken anchor. "I don't…know." Sounding like a question. "Welll, actually yes, I do—"he reached for a cigarette, or a bottle, or a _something_…then foiled, let paper hands fall awkwardly back into his lap. Swallowed. "Because _you_'re here, and you make it _extremely_ difficult for me to be angry, at anything really, _especially_ if that anything is you."

A sound broke her lips between a giggle and a sob as she tried to wipe the salt stains on her sleeve, trying to look less pathetic, the sliver of a smile edging across full, worry bitten lips.

"Ahh _see,_ an' now you've killed me. Not even that nasty bitter little human bit can stand up to that-and you know how humans are, with all the grudges and whatnot." He paused, almost himself again, wonderstruck. Rise and fall. "Not to say I can't hold a grudge, oh, _believe me_ I can, just not against _you._" Punctuated with a bop of his finger on her nose, missing and nearly getting her eye.

She wanted to smile for him, but oh,

how he _trembled_.

Something over frantic and frenetic twitching under the lingering stupor, the absent scratching at his skin-while he talked, while he listened, his left hand kept determined to solve some mystery etched under his forearm, above his elbow, obscured by the filthy fabric of his shirt sleeve.

Charmed, he grinned over at her, hardly noticing the action, dismissing it, _ignoring_ it because she was there and she was sunlight and half way to a smile but she was crying and that was bad and he hated when his Rose cried almost as much as he hated whatever caused it and why was she looking at him like that why was she so worried things are going to be better now because she's there and everything's better when she's there even if he _wasn't_, but he would be just for her, if she wanted that at all or cared but _of course she did _because she was so fucking perfect and—

He stood too quickly from the couch and stumbled halfway across the room, groping for the door jam as the world spun, pulse loud at his temples.

"Doctor?" she clamored off the coushion and to his side, touching his arm. "W'as the matter?"

He held up a hand, searching the hallway, then rushed clumsily to the door at the end, flinging it open as she followed, entering just as his knees crashed against the tile, face half hidden in the toilet bowl, gasping and gagging through the dry heaves.

Frowning, she crouched beside him, trying to offer some support in the form of gentle circles rubbed in between his shoulder blades. Fingers ghosting bone, she catalogued how hollow he had become, stomach dropping as she wondered how long it'd been since he'd last eaten—she knew how he got when caught up in a project, how his priorities fell.

Groaning, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve, exhaustion written in the long lines of his face, hand falling from its place gripping the porcelain to flush the acid, forehead resting sullen against the rim, not bothering to move away as sunken eyes traced slowly over to hers then back down, closed, sharp breaths fading to the sickly sound of maggots working through a carcass, rasping from his lungs.

"C'mon…let's get you cleaned up." She took his hand, moving to help him up.

"I'm tired, Rose." He mumbled, migraine eyes closed against the light.

She huffed, annoyance coloring over her newly expanded spectrum of fear. "I know, but if you come with me you can sleep in an actual _bed_-sound good?"

"Nn, doesn't matter…" swatting her hand away.

"You're acting like a child. Now, come _on—"_

"Now Doctor, are you givin' this nice girl a hard time?"

The blonde snapped around from her near futile efforts to nearly collide with a familiar man dressed all in grey and blue, leaning casually against the door frame. "Jack!" melting, she through her arms around his shoulders, relief banishing her previous anger scraped across the phonelines.

"Heya girlie." He squeezed her back, lifting her a fraction and letting her back to her feet, voice dropping to her ear. "You weren't kidding, huh? Good thing I came."

She nodded, the stress evident in her every fracture of motion, stepping to the side at his silent question, giving permission.

The captain heaved a sigh, then stepped forward, standing over the wreckage, leaning over. "So! Mornin' sunshine, you look like shit." Clapped his hands once together, false cheer fading on his face.

"Ughh…" the Doctor shifted, squinting up at his silhouette. "_Jack_…?"

"The one and only. Sorry Doc, but you're coming with me-"hand fisting around the cadaver's shirt collar, he tugged him from the tile, slinging him across his shoulder. "I know if you won't listen to Rose, you sure as hell won't listen to me, so we gotta do it the hard way. Rose—direct."

"Huh? Oh, yeh, c'mon—this way." She filtered out and started the carved wooden staircase, looking back in concern as the Doctor slung some largely unintelligible insult at his captor.

"Yeah, yeah—and I'm making it as easy as possible." He shifted his cargo, avoiding a run in with the banister, making sure he didn't knock the lanky man against the stairs. "You don't weigh a wet sack of flour, but this would be a lot easier if you weren't so gaddamn tall…"

* * *

Sorry that took a while to get up, but thank you so much for your patience. As pointed out by a lovely guest reader, there is some discrepancy as to Jack's presence in this dimension, and I apologize for that. However, an explanation will be given during the events of the next chapter :]

So yes, any other feedback is much appreciated, if there are any scenarios that anyone out there really wants to see explored later on in this work, let me know and I'll most likely weave it in for you somewhere down the road.

-xo.


	3. If I Could Tear You From the Ceiling

**iii. if i could tear you from the ceiling.**

"This doesn't make any _sense_—how are you even here?" The Doctor asked, sorting himself into a haphazard sitting position after being dumped onto the guestroom's off-white floral bedspread.

"I took a cab." The captain grinned, peeling off his long coat.

"Think you're funny? I mean this _universe_, Jack. I realize you were off g_allivanting_ around the galaxy, doing…_whatever_ with your offensively crude, outdated excuse for time travel the last time I had to have this conversation with Torchwood, but _this is important_." He was off of the bed, swaying like a sheet pinned to clothes line, words rough and tangled in grit teeth over such hollow rasping.

Jack blinked, setting the garment over the back of a chair, palms raised halfway to chest level. "I appreciate the concern, but it's totally fine, Doctor. It's been fine for the past two years." He shrugged, faltering slightly at the expression falling sick across Rose's face, standing there by the closet, fabric folded in her arms. "Besides, it's not like it can _kill me_ or anything." Tone light, charming smile.

"Oh, I don't _care_ about that." He spat, something frigid burning buried in his slaughterhouse eyes, struck into pacing. "That's not the issue here. This is about you _brilliant_, curious, absolute _idiots_ trying to play with toys that _you can't have_, jus'so you can blow a hole through the universe _just because you can_. That is how this all started, Jack, and oh, believe me, it _will_ catch up with you."_ Playing God._

The captain took the venom, swallowed it. Allowed it. _Just words, and look at him Harkness, you know what's wrong._ Plastered on a knowing smile. "Look, I know you're worried, but we can handle it. I'm not bothering anything over here-trust me, _this_ world's Jack is a _housecat_-and there's a waiting period installed to minimize damage to the barrier between. I stay for six months on whichever side I end out on, to allow it time to heal."

"Hah, minimize? Ohh no, that's just an _excuse_. Something to help you all sleep better at night, under what, an _educated guess_? Unless you've calculated the exact amount of time it would take for the conditions on either side of the void to stabilize—which I doubt-_assuming_ that it even works that way, _which it doesn't—"_he stumbled, wallpaper a blur, carpet rising, then he was gripping the wooden railing of the bedside chair; overfocused on the grain patterns, guessing age and origin- _planet Earth, large leaf mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla), Northern Brazil, 70 year old tree, 13 years a chair, built in Western England—_

A large hand closed on his elbow, swatted away as words echoed down, heard in passing through the galesound of whirring thoughts colliding with such long standing exhaustion.

"—Doctor? I was just askin' if you were alright. Maybe you should get to bed-"

"Don't touch me." Scraping himself from the floor, pulse too loud, skin too hot, pinprick incineration starting just below the surface.

"Fine. But, I think I know what's wrong with you. It's gonna be rough, but I'm just trying to help—"

"_You can't!"_ Words torn ragged from his jawbone, twitching forward and shoving the man roughly to the floor, taken so off guard, aiming a sharp kick to his face_—_

"Oi! _None_ of that!" And Rose was there, hand closing on his upper arms, tugging him back, jerking him around by the shirt fabric to stare at her. "I don't know what's gotten on with you, but _that_ isn't gonna work, not with me around." Voice all layers of command, dropping somewhere above a whisper, palm bones migrating to his shoulders, tracing up to his cup his face. "You once asked me what kind 'o man you were, remember? It was sort of rhetorical then, but...I know the answer. Always have…and that's why I'm not gonna let you. I _can't_." Brow drawn, frown sewn tight across the shrapnel in her lungs, tearing in her throat.

And he just stood there, watching her, hands falling open at his sides, tension drained from whitewashed knuckles, sockets fading into something defeated and ancient and eons the echo of such concave screaming. Something on the side of loathing and the tremor of a nod, then eyes back to the carpet.

"Okay…good." She stood frozen a moment in standby, looking him over before letting her hands trail away, one interlacing his, offering a small pressure of support. "Now, you put on these pyjamas I found and get in bed while I make some half-proper tea and…" she frowned, fingertips ghosting the feeble fabric of his so stained shirt. "Yeah, _burn_ these clothes. Sound alright?...Good, 'cause you don't got any other options." A smile fell into her face, breaking the expression half way stern. She nodded for Jack to go a head down, concern written and kept for later. A short exhale and she released his hands, ribcage all aching to linger, the shadow of sorrow etching lonely into heartstrings strained remembrance. Divorcing her flesh from his, she circled back to the door, pausing at the threshold, glancing back. "And, Doctor?...I'm really glad you're here."

Sunlight bleeding through the water.

"Right…thanks." Choked to the witness of her footsteps fading down the hall.

* * *

"Hey, you okay?" Rose nudged the captain, standing in the kitchen, pot scrambled off the burner before it could whistle too loud.

Shoulders strung tight against the dread curling in under his lungs, he forced a smile. "'Course I am." He assured, passing her the sugar.

"Sure you are—thanks—anyway…" she exhaled, palm pressing into her eyesocket, starting to feel the night dragging as adrenaline drained down from frayed nerves. "I think he'll be in a better mood after getting some actual rest."

"Yeah…but I'm afraid it's not that simple, sweetheart."

Not this time.

* * *

"Is he out?"

"What d'you think?" The blonde emerged hushed from the room, armful of the clothes he came in, a whole forensic narration of despondency splayed across the fabric.

He caught the door an inch from closing, stepping past her.

"_Jack? _What are you doing?" she hissed, following him as he went to the bedside, taking the fabric of his left sleeve and gingerly easing it up the deadman's arm.

He held up a finger of his free hand, shushing her as his face fell ashen. Beckoned her closer. "This is what I was worried about." He whispered tightly, lips brushing her ear.

Fear trembled to her fingertips as she glanced to him, then _down_, swallowing a gasp. An area stretching from forearm climbing up above his elbow was every inch a slaughterhouse, skin stained black and blue and sickly green, dotted with so many desperate dug needle marks, a map of slander exposed in venom mapped veins, littered and sallow in the cruelness of the overhead light.

Eyes so full of it burned into her sockets she faltered, _fell_, backwards, scapula grafted to the wall.

Jack exhaled tight through his teeth, looking back to her.

"...Sometimes I _really_ hate being right."

* * *

So, there's number three. First off I want to give a big thanks to Taurus3rockergirl, thisdayandage, and saxon-for-mayor for punching me in the face with their lovely reviews to keep me writing, and second thanks to the new people starting to follow this little bit of refuse. Next one shall be up fairly soon, and again, any questions, comments, or ideas of your own for where this story should go, just drop me a PM or a review :]

**Song: "Blind" by Placebo**

-xo.


	4. Or A Madman and Polluted

**iv. or a madman and polluted.**

"What, so he's a _junkie_ now, is'e? Don't you know how to pick 'em…"

"_Mum!_" The blonde's head snapped up from its place heavy in her hands to shoot a glare across the kitchen table, elbows propped on wood, the first scraps of sunlight through the window exposing the lavender tight under her eyes. "It's not like that, it's just….just don't, okay?"

The ex-con shuffled forward from his place leaning against the counter, hands closing on the back of her chair, silent support as the words trembled from her lips.

Jackie glanced up at him, then back to her daughter, reaching across to take her hand. The woman had stumbled out of bed that morning at her husband's urges, groggily listening to him muttering something about Rose, and being worried, and going to the kitchen, and that he _had to_ get to work, but he'd call. Yawning, she'd dragged herself down the stairs, memories of the night before clinging cold to her recollection as she found the pair silent in the sunrise, cold tea in mugs stained half empty, thick with the taste of so many fragile tracing words.

"You should get some sleep."

"You know I won't."

Chair legs scraping linoleum. "At least take a rest on the couch then…" the mother sighed, bending to place a kiss to the top of her head, a hand resting on Jack's, giving it a squeeze.

The youngest gently pushed the chair back and stood, chest rising and falling on the exhale, eyes closed. Open. Dry.

She was Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth, and she was sick of crying.

At least where anyone could see.

* * *

Behind the last door on the upstairs hallway, the shade of a man dreamed.

No, _remembered._

Curtains closed against the morning, fragments crept around the edges, lining his hunger sharpened profile in faintest gold, catching the shiver of sweat across his skin, the dip in his clavicle, the fact he could probably do with a shave. All silhouette and circumstance whispered on the shadow of breath caught between his lips.

Remembering. Deducing. Searching in his sleep.

An accounting of the secondsminuteshoursdaysweeksmonths he'd lost, just sand through skeleton hands.

.

.

.

_He didn't believe in impossible, not really. Not anymore._

_The Doctor and his TARDIS._

_Living proof._

* * *

_Motor growing in his corner, console blooming welded together so salvaged and foreign in the corner of a musty old flat tucked away in Southeast London, all space-age Frankenstein._

_The shell of mechanics, empty of a proper engine, but he was working on it._

_The Doctor and his TARDIS._

* * *

_One more drink, and it might be a little easier._

_He was brilliant. There were so many options, equations scrawled with a grease pencil across the desk, runoff from the blueprints. It was just a matter of picking the right combination._

_One more drink, and maybe he'd see it staring up from the wood grain._

_The Doctor and his TARDIS and Rose Tyler._

* * *

_The variables slid off the table, written, then carved in the wood panels, so many trailing trainwrecks of thought._

_This body needed more sleep than he was used to, but not tonight. It was just there taunting at his fingertips, hodge-podge sonic in one hand, eviscerated toaster half raised in the other, slip of plastic baggie wrinkled under his shoe. Ballpoint phone digits fading across his palm, borrowed from a bathroom stall._

_The flicker of pink and yellow and denim blue ghosting the corner, but then he blinked. _

_Sometimes he could almost smell her, all spring and strawberry shampoo and sunlight and rain._

_Rose Tyler and The Doctor in his TARDIS._

_...But that was when the dreams started._

* * *

_The ceiling fan was just so far away, rickety, dragging dust from the drywall at each ragged rotation, and his arm was going numb. But at least he'd found a use for that damn tie._

_...(1+x)^n=1+nx/1!+(n(n-1) x^2)/2!+⋯o__499.004783836(10) s__c__ = 0.00200398880410(4) AU/s = 173.144632674(3) AU/day.∫_(-∞)^∞▒〖e^(-x^2 ) dx〗=[∫_(-∞)^∞▒〖e^(-x^2 ) dx〗 ∫_(-∞)^∞▒〖e^(-y^2 ) dy〗]^(1\/2)=[∫_0^2π▒∫_0^∞▒〖e^(-r^2 ) rⅆrⅆθ〗]^(1\/2)=[π∫_0^∞▒〖e^(-u) du〗]^(1\/2)=√_∇⋅∇ψ=(∂^2 ψ)/(∂x^2 )+(∂^2 ψ)/(∂y^2 )+(∂^2 ψ)/(∂z^2 )=1/(r^2 sin θ ) [sin θ ∂/∂r (r^2 ∂ψ/∂r)+∂/∂θ (sin θ ∂ψ/∂θ)+1/sin θ (∂^2 ψ)/(∂φ^2 )]..._.nononononononoNONONONO._

_Pulse thrumming constant, warped, heavy in his head, chest such a slow, inefficient, primitive rise and fall, dragging oxygen in, filtering carbon dioxide rasping out._

_It stayed in the corner, dismantled, floorboards littered with schematics turned to sketches rotting into remembrance, _

_So_

_Far. _

_Away._

_That odd blue box, the apparition, and Doctor…...….who?_

* * *

A/N: Sorry that ended out short and not overtly eventful, more of a segue into morning than anything, but the next one should be up fairly soon! Also, ugh math rofl.

Anyway, thoughts, questions, comments, desires, pet peeves, any of that, just drop me a review or a PM and I will get back to you ASAP. Thanks aain for the continued support!

**Songs: The Crawl- Placebo/ Sleep - My Chemical Romance.**

-xo.


	5. Good Morning Day, Sorry I'm Not There

**v. good morning day, sorry i'm not there.**

He'd slept too long.

_Far _too long.

It snapped sharp behind his eyes, consciousness like a kettle stolen off the stove before it can shriek. The situation was catalogued in the seconds before bleary eyes opened—a force of habit, from a lifetime of waking turning so quickly into _running_- the soft linen under his fingertips, the clear if not faintly floral scent on the air, the degree of darkness, the sound of shallow breathing, and _fuck _that pounding in his head.

Groaning, he scraped himself upright, profile stark against the brightness of the nearest moon hanging in the velvet sky, heels of his palms digging into sallow sockets, then dropping into his lap with the subtext of a sigh.

He had to get out of there.

Slinging his legs over the edge, he_ froze_—because there she was, all curled contortion into the bedside chair haunting the corner, hips out of line with the shape of her spine, head lolling at an off kilter angle, hair falling into closed eyes. Full lips and shallow breathing, neutral expression tainted tight with daylight worry.

He stagnated a handful of heartbeats, petrified in a passing terror that she could _hear_ it bludgeoning his ribcage-almost impressed by the volume of the solitary effort—something between dread and absolution lead between his lungs.

Fingers raking back through his hair, he tore his eyes away, turning his back to that girl he lost, that marvelous girl almost like an angel, except a few shades brighter. He creaked over to the window, watching the moon trace its slow circumvention, so incredibly, _impossibly_ far away. Just 1738 kilometers to the cratered surface, orbit tugging it further from the planet at a rate of 3.82±0.07 cm per second—at least, until the year 30273- barely a stone's throw off, really, and he couldn't reach it. Just one thousand, seven hundred, and thirty eight fucking kilometers away, existing right there, right _then_, and _he couldn't even manage that. _Not like this, not now.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to ignore the hammer in his head, the ticking in his veins. He couldn't stay there. A quick searching of the relatively small room revealed that his clothes were inexplicably gone, and he was stranded in those blasted pajamas, so like the ones from his regeneration sickness, a relic of some cosmic mockery.

Whatever. He could just nick some others sometime over the next week-it wasn't as if he was trying to impress anyone. Well…

One hand hovered tremors over the doorknob. Soldier's hands. Mechanic's hands. _Addict's hands._

Unintended, he glanced back over her form crumpled and waiting in the chair, almost guilty. No one in the house would be awake now, the perfect moment to slip out and fade into the fabric of the shattered city until it was time.

_What kind of man am I?_

The question echoed, all uncertainty tangled in brittle bones as his knuckles went white around the brass knob. The knowing that whatever he was, he didn't have the TARDIS. He was stranded, just so much driftwood, nine hundred six years of daydream on his tongue. He wasn't what she wanted—just a mad bloke with half a sonic and a fistful of memories.

But goddammit this was for_ her_, why didn't she understand, why was it so hard, this should have been perfect, doesn't she realize that the _other_ Doctor could never, would never love her like he could? Wholly, completely, _mortally. _How _dare _she think any less of him, compare him to _himself _and find him lacking, castaway, _substandard,_ when every ache of his one track heart was for—

No.

He couldn't make an excuse out of her. She had every right to be upset, or confused, or whatever combination of chemicals that would lead her to distance. He had lost her in the first place. But now she was there, all daybreak and soul like a house on fire, burning so bright, always so bright, enough he'd go blind with watching and it'd be worth every moment crawling in such magnificent darkness.

But still no TARDIS, and now a whole vocabulary of vices carving themselves into the failing flesh of this short term body. It wasn't time yet.

Knob turning, then snatched back into place.

_It wasn't time._

But still.

He grit his teeth and tore himself away from the brass, from the reason, from the logic of it all and resolved himself back to the moonlight ghosting across the carpet.

_It wasn't time—_

Steeled into a shade irrevocably flippant, he plucked an extra woven blanket from the foot of the bed and gingerly draped it across the girl's shoulders, tucking it carefully into place then straightening, allowing a few fragmented pulse beats to pass just standing there in the silence and _watching _her before banishing himself to the far edge of the floorboards, fingertips tracing the shadow of the window panes on the white painted sill.

_-Then right good thing I'm still half Timelord._

Because if there was one thing that he was sure of, one truth rasping at the back of his consciousness as he stood there stagnant, it was that the Doctor, with or without his TARDIS….needed Rose Tyler.

* * *

Short, but I wanted to get something up since I'd been out of town for a few days. This was going to be the first part of a longer chapter, but I decided to go ahead and upload it as is. It's a little lighter than usual, but I hope you guys don't mind the different tone too much. Anyway, any questions/comments/rage/suggestions/requests/etc are all welcome in a review or PM! :]

-xo.

**Song: You Make Me Smile - Blue October**


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